"Gregory Orr's new book is dazzling and timeless. Sure, the trappings of modern life appear at the edges of these poems, but their focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent ? not God, but the beloved ? that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time. It's an experience usually reserved for reading the ancients, and clearly that was partly Orr's inspiration. I'm reminded of nothing so much as Issa's haiku (translated by Robert Hass): 'The world of dew is the world of dew. / And yet, and yet ? .' Like this tiny rumination, Orr's poems don't feel like dusty museum pieces, because there's too much urgency of emotion, like the whisperings of a lover." Read the entire Virginia Quarterly Review review.

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One Response to "Poetry of Loss"

Jim Colby
June 25, 2006
at 09:48 AM

This review helped me understand Mr. Orr to a greater degree of appreciation. I came from the North Beach era of San Francisco and like the un-metered prose of that time, now I see that Mr. Orr has continued that tradition. Ref: Poetry of Survival.